Uber Accidentally Released Hundreds Of Driver Details

The taxi app company inadvertently leaked the personal details of hundreds of its drivers last night, revealing details of addresses, images of driving licences, taxi licence details and social security numbers.

Drivers logging on to the Uber Partner service portal on 13 October noticed that when they headed to the "Details" portion of the site, they were presented with details of other drivers. Several took to the UberPeople.net forum to discuss their findings, in addition to notifying the taxi service.

"We were notified about a bug impacting a fraction of our US drivers earlier this afternoon," an Uber spokesperson said. "Within 30 minutes our security team had fixed the issue.

"We'd like to thank the driver who drew it to our attention and apologise to those drivers whose information may have been affected. Their security is incredibly important to Uber and we will follow up with them directly."

Uber claimed that no more than 674 drivers were affected in the US, but didn't give exact details on how widely that information was available on phones or computers using the portal. Several drivers noted that their details were subsequently missing from the service after the leak.

The concerns of the affected drivers are that much of the information that was leaked could readily be used to duplicate their identity online: social security numbers, addresses and licence details could readily be used to create a false online account, or hack an existing one.

The leak follows in the wake of a larger release of driver details eight months ago, when the details of 50,000 drivers were revealed by a hacker which Uber suspects might have been linked to rival ride company Lyft.

Would sensitive data leaks of user information change your use of the service? Let us know below.